Joanne Barkan wrote an article for Philanthropy in which she showed how the super-rich use their wealth to endanger democracy. Barkan has written several articles on the escapades of the billionaire boys’ club. One of her best is Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools. She has written many other articles on school reform, mostly in Dissent; they are archived here.
She takes a close look at the activities of Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation in pushing a referendum on charters in the state of Washington, then reacting with outrage when the state supreme court overturned the referendum.
The Gates Foundation and its allies like school privatization, and they have spent millions of dollars to provide alternatives to public schools. They are in step with the new Trump administration in their conviction that public schools are usually “failing schools.” They pay no attention to the studies that find that charter schools are just as likely to “fail” as the public schools they replace. The only difference is the abandonment of democratic control.
When the court ruled against “their” charter school win, Bill Gates and his friends went after the judges who rendered the decision. The case that Barkan focuses on is one of the judges, who raised $200,000 for his election, then saw Gates and friends drop $500,000 into his challenger’s race.
This story has a happy ending. Gates, Walton, and other billionaires lost. The judges who defended the state constitution won. So did the public.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Threats to Democracy abound:
Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/opinion/sunday/is-donald-trump-a-threat-to-democracy.html?emc=edit_th_20161217&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717&_r=0
Days after Election Day, Neal Gabler wrote an evocative BillMoyers.com post decrying America and expressing deep concern for the future of our country.
He wrote, “America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.
Whatever place we now live in is not the same place it was on Nov. 7. No matter how the rest of the world looked at us on Nov. 7, they will now look at us differently. We are likely to be a pariah country. And we are lost for it.”
Gabler’s somewhat dark post led to some strong public responses, with over 9,000 comments on our platforms alone. Here’s a sampling of that feedback, which has been lightly edited.
Your Turn: Farewell, America – BillMoyers.com
http://billmoyers.com/story/turn-farewell-america/
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I have said this before and I will say it again. The very rich are trying to take over many actions that are under community control or government control. They are not just looking for power they are also looking to make money $$$$$. These two desires for power and control to make money are dangerous. It is dangerous to democracy and to individual rights. They have to be constantly monitored or they will take over many types of services with out understanding what they are doing.
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Bill Gates and the Walton’s left no happy ending In Ohio. They bailed, on financial support for the major charter school cheerleader in the state. The organization that “shaped charter school policy for a decade” disbanded last week. In its wake, an alleged pay-to-play state government, fleeced taxpayers, 80% of charter schools with an F on state report cards, hapless, uneducated students, and no end in sight for future damage. The kicker, the one time that an Ohio city, offered its citizens, a vote on charter schools, they voted “no”. There’s no doubt that the richest 0.1% hijacked democracy, with the help of Senators like Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and N.J’s Cory Booker.
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i have some hope for Ohio.
after the charter scandal it seems like they chased out the worst of the ed reform crew in Columbus. I feel as if the charter mania of the last decade is over.
The state superintendent actually visits public schools now. You never hear the nutty vitriolic attacks on “government schools” you heard at the height of this, in 2010.
Ohio was one of the first states to jump on the ed reform bandwagon.
It makes sense that they would be one of the first to start questioning the dogma.
It’s refreshing. I’m proud of them for recommitting to serving the children in public schools.
We’ll always have charter/voucher lobbyists. They just don’t seem to be running the show anymore in Ohio. I’m not sure what happened.
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Thanks Chiara for the update.
Debbie Downer replies, “It was in 2016 that Sen. Brown sent his request for $71 mil. to expand privatization (to be spent in 2017?). Do the tech industry parasites, still covet profits from linking standards/curriculum/testing/data analytics? Does Ohio’s law, that requires testing by computer, still apply? Are earlier reports true, that the Senate Education Chair’s sister remains on Fordham’s payroll? Other than Fordham promoting school “choice”, to Ohio newspaper monopolies, while being funded by the Walton’s, (ironically- Walmarts operate as monopolies in many of their markets), what will Fordham’s staff be doing in the future? It was in 2016, that Fordham reported on a finding by Dr. Figlio, about the benefit of school choice. It would be valuable to have Fordham identify where that finding is, in the research, or to explain, if it’s absent, how the error was made. The claim was published as commentary in the Columbus Dispatch, reaching the entire metropolitan area, including politicians, bureaucrats and voters.
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Under Trump I expect to see mass privatization of everything he and the deplorables can grab. This includes oil and gas expansion, education, possibly national parks, transportation,and some aspects of health and human services. Trump has no plan to improve anything. He intends to lure businesses into his scheme with massive tax breaks that will most likely create a larger deficit and worse prospects for all the “little people” like you and me. http://www.nationofchange.org/2016/11/25/trumps-infrastructure-plan-really-just-privatization-scam/
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The difference between Trump/DeVos and Obama/Duncan-King is that Trump will privatize and monopolize everything openly. Gates’ Department of Ed did it cloaked in falsehoods of social justice. The result is the same. Bill Gates puts his privatization agenda in our schools the way he puts GMOs in our food — without warning.
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Wow. I thought “philanthro-capitlaist” was a frightening term. Now I’m contemplating the even scarier personality of an openly self-titled “philanthro-BARON.”
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Probably the old term “robber barons” would work just as well. Only today they use privatization to steal public assets and stuff them into private pockets. They turn public assets and property into private equity.
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But, this is exactly the truth. This is ‘dynastic wealth’ re-establishing it self, after the people had a bit of a fling with democracy after the depression, the dust blow and WW2.
The ‘deep’ state is more than the billionaire’s boys club that messes with turning a public asset into a private industry.
These oligarchs have the wealth that once were available only to nations. I write at a genuine new-site, where I must back with facts (links) everything I say. Here are 2 of the Barons that are about to win the day, because our Secty of the Interior, and our head the EPA will give them our aquifers and our rivers.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924
Their hand is behind everything, hidden in the national media which they own.
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